Beyond the “Dangers of Geertzism.” Giovanni Levi in Conversation with Giovanni Zampieri

Giovanni Zampieri; Giovanni Levi

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19223

Authors

Giovanni Zampieri Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padua https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8848-0808

Giovanni Zampieri is a doctoral candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Padua (Italy). From September 2023 to February 2024, he was a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale University (USA). He is interested in historical and cultural sociology, sociological theory, and the sociology of ideas and intellectuals.
Giovanni Levi Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Giovanni Levi is a Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). He previously taught at the University of Turin and the University of Viterbo (Italy) and at universities in Spain, France, Portugal, United States, and South America. One of the pioneers of the Italian microhistorical approach, Levi directed the book series “Microstorie” (Einaudi) and the journal Quaderni storici. His book L’eredità immateriale (Einaudi, 1985) has been translated into twelve languages. Besides the books Centro e periferia di uno stato assoluto (Rosenberg & Sellier, 1985) and Microhistorias (Ediciones Uniandes, 2019), Levi has authored many essays on the relationship between history and psychoanalysis, microhistory, the history of consumption in the modern era, the uses of biography, and against the approach of the Global History.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19223

Keywords:

Microhistory, historical sociology, Geertzism, interdisciplinarity

Abstract

In this interview with Giovanni Zampieri, historian Giovanni Levi reflects on his intellectual career, focusing particularly on the relationship between history, sociology, and interpretive anthropology as practiced by Clifford Geertz. In the interview, Levi elaborates on debates at the intersection of these disciplines concerning comparison and generalization and the relationship between knowledge and language. These themes open new avenues for reflection at the porous borders of history and the social sciences, in continuity with the insights offered by the other contributors to “The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty”.

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Beyond the “Dangers of Geertzism.” Giovanni Levi in Conversation with Giovanni Zampieri

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